Klei Entertainment's 2010 2D downloadable brawler Shank has been given the greenlight for a sequel.

Electronic Arts announced at a Gamasutra-attended press conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday that its EA Partners label will publish Shank 2, which the company says expands on the original's combat system and "introduces an intense new, arcade-style survival co-op mode."

"We took the feedback from the community and ran with it, putting our own flavor on every change," said Klei founder Jamie Cheng in a statement. "For Shank 2, we literally took apart the game and put it back together to push the envelope in combat mechanics, visuals, and 2D animation in games."

"We didn't want to just 'build more Shank,' we redesigned all the underlying systems to give you twice the fidelity and far more control over our favorite stabbing man," Cheng continued in a separate post on the just-launched Shank 2 blog.

Klein considers Shank a "learning experience" for the studio, saying that while the original wasn't a huge blockbuster, it "did well for everybody involved."